Subject: Re: Netbooting, Minor Problems
To: Tobias Ernst <tobi@bland.fido.de>
From: Matthias Drochner <drochner@zel459.zel.kfa-juelich.de>
List: port-alpha
Date: 04/30/1999 14:02:55
tobi@bland.fido.de said:
> nfs_boot: trying BOOTP/DHCP
> nfs_boot: timeout...
> cannout mount root, error = 60 

The "timeout" really only once? It should try for about
half a minute and there should be 3 or 4 such messages.

> As I only supply
> defaults by pressing enter three times, the kernel cannot really be lacking
> information.

Yes - the second try should be exactly identical to the first one.
I've seen such problems if client and server were separated by an
ethernet switch which took some time between seeing a new address
and actually forwarding to it. One had to disable the "spanning tree"
algorithmus in the switch to make it work.
You could run the bootp server in some debug mode, and perhaps
use another machine for "tcpdump" to get a clue what happens.
Another workaround could be to increase the "TOTAL_TIMEOUT" constant
in nfs/nfs_boot.c.

best regards
Matthias